Those who know me best.

It is inherent to Druid philosophy that the natural world be at least part of if not the inspiration for, the answers to our questions.  Often I find that the deeper the question, the deeper the search into nature I must go to find it.  Sometimes this comes through meditation, sometimes through inspiration and other times remains confusing.  Sometimes I get answers to questions I did not even understand I was asking...

I often find that when it is confusing though, it is largely because I am making it confusing.  There is usually a missing piece that I am overlooking and that tends to account for most if not all of my thinking errors. I've mentioned before that human beings are really no different from other animals is most respects.  I heard it said recently (If I find the source I will cite it) that the biggest difference between humans and animals is that we have an understanding of our own mortality and animals do not.  I think that this is an interesting thought but I am not sure I can agree with it entirely for a couple of reasons.  For one thing, I am not sure that we can say for certain the method by which beings other than ourselves come to conclusions about such things.  For instance, if a Bear knows that someday it will die of starvation, violence or old age, the obvious instinct would be to die of old age.  That doesn't mean that the Bear has no sense of it's own mortality, it simply means that the Bear is trying to live as long as possible.  So, in essence, I think that it is more likely that the Bear more completely understands and accepts it's own mortality as opposed to being afraid of it which is the tendency in humans. 

Again, as much as I identify with other beings in the natural world, especially bears, that does not mean that I exactly think as a Bear so I am not going to pretend I have the answer.  The bottom line is that it is pretty clear that other beings have different cognitive methods than we do and to assume that they are unaware of the fact they are going to die someday presupposes that if they did, they would be afraid which also presupposes that this cognitive aspect is unique to humans.  I would say that is a pretty sweeping assumption. My assumption may be considered by some to be just as sweeping but I still consider it more plausible.

This difference in cognition between ourselves and other beings though, is a big part of what Druidry is about for me.  Each different species has different manners of viewing the world.  Certainly the Lion has a different understanding of the world than the Gazelle does, as I am sure that the Oak and the Fern do as well.  Understanding that these differences exist is a part of what draws me to this spiritual path, it is a way of respecting all other beings on their own terms and not on human terms.  Building a relationship with another being, spiritually or otherwise, means that you have to accept that their perceptions will be different from yours and learn to appreciate that, especially when another being creates boundaries that it does not wish you to cross.

Trying to blend our edges with another being to create relationship is easier when we don't understand that being entirely.  This is, in large part, because we have no expectation of what that relationship will be like.  I can remember many times in my younger years approaching women in bars with the aim of trying to get them to come home with me or at least get a number and take them out.  My aim was never to create a relationship that was open ended, my intentions were very clear.  I am sure that I would have had greater success had I simply left it open.  When you come in with predetermined goals in mind beyond simply creating relationship, the being with whom you are trying to do so may wish to refuse.  Refusal is about trust.  People who have goals in creating relationship are not focused on the relationship itself, they are focused on getting their own needs or desires met. Creating a connection with a tree, for example, is easier for me at times than blending edges with another human being.   A tree knows that it is a tree and being a tree is the focus of it's existence.  It is not concerned with trying to look like a tree or act like a tree.  Human beings tend to complicate themselves by feeling one way and acting another, as I did when I approached women.  I acted like it was no big deal but I had ulterior motives and they knew that.   With other human beings, sometimes the hardest guesswork is your own guesswork.  I think that the real difference between us and most of the other beings we share the Earth with is that human beings are capable of lying to themselves to justify what they are doing.  This is a subtle shift in perception on the grand scale but has an indelible impact upon how we interact with other beings.  I doubt that the fox ever lies to itself about why it hunts mice under the Winter snow.  To me, I feel it is important to question what you hope to get out of a relationship.  If the hope is a gain for you and a loss for them then the blending of edges cannot be honorable or honest.  If the communication becomes laced with venom in an attempt to hurt one another, then it is time to respect that relationship for what it is and walk away or attempt to establish better rapport.  The unfortunate part of human relationships is that this requires honesty with yourself first and I find that most human beings lack that level of self awareness.  As in my last post, finding that honesty is about entering the darkness of yourself and coming to terms with it.  That is honest self awareness.  The tree does not lie to itself about being a tree but human beings lie to themselves constantly about their own motives, experience and humanity.

This morning, I went outside with my wife and son and we played in the snow a bit.  Well, they played...I looked at the garage and realized I need to clean it out to get the cars in.  We went out into the woods to look at our ritual space and as we were coming back I noticed how small my son's footsteps are in the snow compared to my own.  This gave me a wonderful spot of inspiration.  He is new in the world and I thought about how this was a good lesson in Nature for me to remember.  Right now, my footsteps are small in the world as I begin the journey towards becoming a Druid.  As I grow, so too will my footsteps and so too will his.  I may have some wild opinions and I can be very opinionated about things but I seek to cause no harm to others that is not due them and I can only lead by example.  Sometimes I fall short of this because I can over complicate things.  Something that people tend to forget when they seek to blend their edges with another is that the complications they find in those relationships may be their own.  I am a human being having a human experience.  I am not trying to be a Bear, Bear just speaks to me.  It is my spiritual beliefs that give me a connection to the world around me in a positive way. I won't apologize for that, I won't make excuses for it.  If you don't like it then you don't have to associate with me.  This is hard for some folks to understand even though I wish them to understand it.  When I am in communion with the green Earth though, I feel known and valued.  Another reminder that those who know me best are not necessarily those who have known me longest...something Nature taught me.

The indignity of strangers...

It is surprisingly easy for us to find ourselves mired in darkness.  We read daily the evils of the world on our computer screens, in magazines and in newspapers.  You can rest assured that by the time you finish reading this sentence someone, somewhere in the world, will have been hurt by someone else. It is not enough to say that the ills of the world around us are many. On the other hand, human beings are still doing what human beings have done for 50,000 years after a fashion, the difference is that there are many more of us now, a large portion of us are packed in like sardines and we really make little effort to know one another. We have carefully constructed boundaries between us in the form of property lines and laws that seek to maintain the structures of power and privilege without requiring us to remain dutiful to one another as human beings. Instead, we are encouraged to amuse ourselves with reading about every awful thing in the world around us as though it is about to crash through our door while simultaneously being informed that we are powerless to stop it leaving us the only other option: Complain.


This is a good time of year to enter the darkness as we await the return of the sun, but what treasure should such journeys yield?  In spiritual practice, entering the darkness most often means a journey into the parts of yourself that encompass your anger, anxiety, fear and despair.  The purpose of such a journey is not to wrestle it and make the darkness yield to the light but rather to learn how to live with it, accept it and incorporate the darker part of our nature by acknowledging our weakness and anger and using it to move forward in our lives. 

The problem with the information we ingest from the "outside" world is when we refuse to filter it appropriately.  Acknowledging that something is wrong is all well and good but when all we do with that information is internalize it, the information loses it's value.  What usually comes out of that internalization is the desire for changing the world around us in destructive ways because that is what the information feels like it is doing in our guts.  What's worse is when you begin using others as human shields, admonishing them for failing to do something about the ills of the world while doing nothing yourself.  When you scold people for fearing to act and fail to act out of fear yourself, you are a greater part of the problem than the people you are angry at in the first place.

As I have stated before in this blog, finding harmony within yourself, or at least beginning to reconcile the disparate portions of who you are, takes on an important role in bringing that balance to the world around you.  It is the internal struggle of the self that most defines who we are and how we can be a force for change in the world around us.  When we take the darkness of the world into the darkness of ourselves though, the reconciliation of our spirit suffers.

This need not be considered in purely spiritual terms.  In that, I mean that any person who wishes to see change in the world around them must first be sure that they can do for themselves what they wish to do outside themselves.  If you attempt force change on people by despising their actions or the way they think and speaking in hushed tones about it on social media you will come up empty handed every time.  If you wish to make a difference, you must first face the darkness within yourself and learn from that struggle before you start complaining about all the people in the world who have not come to terms with their own darkness.

I don't mind admitting that 20 years ago I was a dyed in the wool racist.  I had a series of bad interactions when I was going to school in "the big city" and the culture shock of actually interacting with other ethnic groups left me falling back on all of the racial bullshit I had learned growing up in rural Maine.  It took me a long time to finally let go of that but when I did, I found that what fell away was the superficiality of it and not a deep seeded belief.  In my time of distress (and for some time after) I clung to the familiar trappings of what I had come to know growing up in a town without any real diversity.  When I finally freed myself from being shackled to such notions, my real education began.  The problem as I look back upon it, was that I had all of these ideas about how the world actually worked (not uncommon for an 18 year old) and when I went out into the world for the first time, the limits of my knowledge were confronted in a way that had me run scared back to the bullshit ideals of racial prejudice. That part of my journey is as much a lifelong pursuit as becoming a Warrior or a Druid Priest.  However, having started the work of identifying this about myself, I can learn how to deal with the prejudices I see in the world and understand better how to combat them.  Darkness is neither good nor bad, it just is.  Ultimately though, darkness is about fear and learning to deal with that fear.

The point here is that when we rely too much on others to tell us how we should think and feel we begin to lose the option of thinking critically about what it is we are being told.  It is no different with negativity.  The journey into your own darkness should be one to strike a balance in yourself not to judge yourself by the opinions of others.  It is one thing to seek wisdom and bring that wisdom to your own table, it is a far different thing however, to swallow something hook line and sinker then chase your own tail trying to find it.

In essence though, what I often find is that when we do such things we are really avoiding the journey into our own darkness. I would describe it spiritually as taking the darkness of the world and connecting it to the darkness of the self in a manner that it becomes a constant feedback loop. We feel as though we are doing something about the wrong we see outside of ourselves in a manner that prevents us from being active in our communities.

We cannot begin to disassemble the power structures that enables oppression of any kind until we find within ourselves the power to overcome our own fear.  Oppressive cultures and power structures exist because we allow them to out of fear.  In our system of American Government, that fear has led to an increased number of laws with the openly stated goal of "protecting" us, (in some cases from ourselves)  yet these same laws challenge our basic human rights.  You cannot remove those power structures by whining on social media, playing video games or sequestering yourself away from the world because you fear it.  Even if you are just beginning the necessary work of the self, you owe it to yourself and the world you care for to do something, anything no matter how simple.  For, if you recognize the ills of the world and do nothing more than complain about them, it is because you are waiting for someone else to solve the problem without your real world effort.

There are actually quite a few people who are waking up these days to the disparate intentions of power and social justice. People who, through even the smallest of efforts every day, attempt to make the world around them a better place. These are people who respect and value their own contribution as human beings to the ills of the world and make consistent and small changes to support the greater change towards equality in our culture for everyone and not one group in particular. It is refreshing and exciting for me to speak with them and know their names and learn their stories. Those that refuse to encounter others outside their carefully constructed inner sanctum will never truly meet these people, even when they shaking their hand. Instead, they will assume that decent, caring people, are like all the other mean spirited, predatory beings they read about online or see on T.V., should be treated as the enemy for crimes they never committed based on the opinions of someone they have never met. Those who have walled themselves off from actually interacting with the world around them will treat even those who are actualizing positive change with the indignity of strangers. How is that social justice? When you become the monster you wish to fight, you are not sacrificing yourself in a meaningful way and you are not creating change...you are creating one more thing to change others through fear. A whip cracked across the back to keep up the pace of work is the same as a whip cracked across the back when you are told to stop. You do both because you fear the whip, not because you have become a free agent.